The Atlas Obscura Podcast · Monday, August 10, 2026
The podcast suggests that William Penn played a significant role in facilitating the migration of Johannes Kelpius and his group of radical Pietists to Pennsylvania. Penn had a deal with the English monarchy to house religious dissenters in his colonial territory.
“I happen to think that the evidence points toward William Penn himself actually paying their way and and taking great pains. Oh, really?”
“Penn had worked out a nice little deal with the English monarchy to get land in exchange for housing the crown's religious dissenters.”
“So around the end of the 1600s, Kelpius gets on a boat out of London with his fellow Pietists and lands in Philadelphia.”